LOCATION ERRORS IN PARTIAL-REPORT BAR-PROBE EXPERIMENTS - IN SEARCH OF THE ORIGIN OF CUE-ALIGNMENT PROBLEMS

In studies using Averbach and Coriell's (1961) partial-report bar-prob e paradigm with linear arrays, most errors involve the naming of an it em that was in the display but in a position other than the cued one. Up to now, there is no general agreement on the origin of these locati on errors. Point of departure in this paper is that part of the locati on errors arises from inappropriate application of the cue. It is test ed whether this originates from problems to perceive the position of t he cue (''cue-displacement hypothesis'') or from confusion about the o rder of the items in the array (''item-order hypothesis''). The result s of two bar-probe experiments are reported. A novel, crucial, finding in both experiments is that, among the location errors, there was a p reponderance of response letters that came from the central side of th e cued item. In the second experiment, this was observed not only in t he usual postcue conditions but also when the cue preceded the array. These results positively corroborate the cue-displacement hypothesis a nd do not support the item-order hypothesis: The cue tends to be perce ived more toward the center of the visual field than it actually is ex posed-that is, there is a central drift of the cue.